Ammunition

An oversized ammunition box tells the story of a man and his gun.

Faded Glory

Dd’s Faded Glory represents the ebb and flow of conversations on Twitter around Russia’s suspected interference in the USA Elections of November 2016 and the subsequent fallout, such as the congressional hearings and the Mueller investigation. Taking its feed from the live Twitter API the conversations are simplified to a positive or negative statement about Russia’s alleged interference. The more negative the conversations, the stronger the Russian flag shines through the Stars and Stripes until it eclipses Old Glory completely. Combining textiles using a devoré technique to distress the fabric the work is combined with LED’s and electronics and a twitter feed.

DicktatorDon

Project: DicktatorDon

Medium: Felt, Electronics, Pins

Interactive Installation Size: 60 cm X 75 cm

DicktatorDon, the felt-fabric effigy representative of President Donald Trump is chained to a shelf by his ankle, staring out at the gallery. Above the shelf is a fake news tweet from the @theRealDonaldTrump written in his inimicalable style, declaring outrage that people might want to stab him with a pin at all. Below is written the slogan Making America Great Again, One Prick At A Time.

The shelf has a built-in pincushion and a gold mirror in which he can see himself reflected at all times, references to Narcissus and his trademark gold everything. With many pins to hand there is plenty of ammunition for people to grab and jab him with. Laughter, by far, is the most common response with people gleefully and enthusiastically jabbing him to great amusement. One group decided to balance him face down suspended on the pins whilst others flipped him over and jabbed pins in his eyes. He was certainly under attack. An added dimension to the interaction is that if you happen to jab him in the crotch with the pin his eyes light up. The interaction is designed in such a way that only ametal pin will work if it is to complete the electronic circuit. Prodding him won’t do, you literally have to penetrate him with something sharp and something conductive in nature. Perhaps the feedback loop gives way to a feeling of empowerment in the participant. They take an action and it is registered with a flash of blue from his LED eyes.

However, for all those who want to interact with him there are many who do not for a variety of reasons. Worried about its relation to voodoo makes some uncomfortable. Others state that violence acted upon him by stabbing him with pins is no better than the bullish manner he exhibits to the world. To this end, they believe him to be a stand-in for real thing, seeing their enacted violence as the real thing too. For most though, he has been rendered to a figure of amusement and ridicule and gets nothing short of what he deserves.

Knife Nation

Project: Knife Nation

Medium: Fabric, Cotton

Interactive Installation Size: 7m X 2m

The Saint George’s Cross, the emblem of England, is stitched into flags of differing sizes, each stitch representing the number of recorded crimes involving a knife or sharp implement in selected regions in England in 2013-14.

Threads trail, left hanging in anticipation of more crimes yet to be committed, the installation never quite complete, awaiting new data ready for the stitching to resume. Each flag’s dimensions vary drastically, as the relative area of each flag corresponds to the crimes per 100,000 population. Each stitch corresponds to the absolute number of crimes per region.

London’s flag size is distinctly larger in size than any of the others flags in the seriesdue its large population, yet the entire canvas is covered in stitches, reflecting the reporting of over 10076 incidents that year.

Contrast this with Surrey, showing the lowest number of incidents, the forty three knife crimes in the region barely completing a stitched one-line cross.

There are 38 regions in the UKand Knife Crime focuses on five of them. London, 10,076*; the second largestGreater Manchester, 1643; the smallest Surrey and two other regions, Essex, 43: 531 and Devon and Cornwall, 301.

This piece was produced in collaboration with data researcher Miriam Quick.